Bringing Business to Retail podcast, episode 14, with Trish Springsteen. Welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast on SalenaNight.com. Stay ahead of the competition by opening your doors to business experts so you can learn, grow, and be inspired. Passionate about bringing business strategies to independent retailers. Please welcome your host, SalenaNight. Welcome to today's episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. I'm your host, SalenaNight. So often in retail stores, especially in small business, I see business owners who are completely overwhelmed and what often fails when things get too much is the art of talking to each other. We expect that because we've always done it, everybody else should know how to do it as well. So today's guest is going to bring this topic back to you and the way that you communicate with your team, your suppliers, and your customers. With over 15 years experiencing communication, training, and public speaking, Trish knows how to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone, change their thinking, and give them confidence and communication skills that they need to succeed. She's worked for some noteworthy national and global companies, including Australia Post, Nokia, Jones Langlessell, and Rio Tinto. So from personal experience, Trish tells me that she became aware of the real cost to companies when they fail what she calls the effective communication test. So working with a partner, she develops and practical systems for improving communication in any organization, and she's coached a range of people from small business owners through to business executives in the art of communication. And today she's going to share some insightful information on where we do well as a small business owner and where we may need to look a little bit harder about how we communicate. Now before we jump in today's episode, I want to remind you about my current offer, which is access to my 21-day boutique bootcamp, full of proven strategies to help you get more customers. The course is normally $197, but for my podcast listeners, I'm offering free access. Simply go to selenonight.com/21dbb. So 21-day-b. 21-day B for day B for boutique B for bootcamp. Enough for me. Let's get into today's episode with Trish Springsteen. Hi, welcome back to the bringing business to retail podcast. And today's guest is Trish Springsteen. She is a public speaking coach, a mentor and an author. And I've brought her on today because I wanted to talk about how we communicate and not just sort of how we communicate, but how we communicate, I'm just going to stop right there. It's working. Sorry, I thought my call recorder wasn't working. I'm just going to start again. That's fine. Welcome back to the bringing business to retail podcast. Today's guest is Trish Springsteen. She is a public speaking coach, a mentor and an author. And I've brought her on today to talk about communication and specifically the difference between how we communicate with our staff and how we communicate with our customers. So welcome Trish. Hi, Selena. I'm really pleased to be here. Thanks so much. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Right. Well, I actually work with business owners, entrepreneurs, employees to help them increase leads and close their sales, particularly in the business owner side. But also to have confidence to be able to grab opportunities when they come by. And we do that while helping them to become awesome speakers any time anywhere. Because what few people realise is that the strategies that speakers use to become awesome are the same strategies that you can use as a business owner, as an entrepreneur or in your life to be able to be clear, concise and coherent when you want your communication to count. I was reading on your website and it says that you and your partner developed real and practical systems for improving communication in any organisations. And I can see that you worked with some really big corporates like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and some multinationals like Jones Langlessale, the property developers and Rio Tinto Mining. Can you take these real and practical systems and use them in small business? Or is this something that just big business? Does it cost lots of money? Is it something that's only for big business? Oh, absolutely not. Being able to put in some speaking and some communication systems applies right across the board from a one-printer, which is that single printer, that one-person business, right through small business, medium-sized businesses and up to the big organisations. In fact, it's probably easier in some respects for small businesses to get the communication right because they've got a smaller team, a smaller group and they can get that communication going and getting their staff involved a lot easier. So I've got a couple of questions here and I don't want to get too distracted, but my first question is how does the communication between your staff and your customers differ? Like what tactics do you have to have or what strategies do you have in place when you're dealing with two ultimately different people in your life. One you want something, I guess you want something from both of them, but one obviously works for you, but the other one is going to pay you for your services. So what are some strategies that you can use? So let's start with communicating with our staff. How do we get it right? To getting it right with the staff is actually firstly communicating. I know that sounds really basic, but you'd be surprised how few owners actually get their staff involved with their communication. Maybe if I give you a little bit of an example of a story, a coffee shop owner that I worked with. He had a small star, had a coffee shop and as most people, some people may not realize in a coffee shop it's not so much the coffee that makes you the money, it's the upsell for the sandwiches and cakes that go with it. So when he's working on the counter he gets everybody upselling and it works really well and he said to me, "But when I wasn't there it dropped off." And he said, "How do I get my staff to do what I do when I'm there?" And I said, "Well, have you actually sat down and talked to them? Have you spoken to them about what your vision is for your coffee shop? Have you got them involved in that vision? Have you sold them into what's in it for them?" And basically he said, "Well, not really, I've just told them that we need to make sales and this is what we do." And I said, "Well, unless you actually involve your staff and get them to take ownership of your big vision of what's going on, you're going to have that problem ongoing." So what he did was he sat down, talked to the staff, told them about his vision, told them about where he wanted that coffee shop to go, got them involved in that so that it became part of their ongoing vision as well. And as soon as he did that, then everybody started working as a team. They wanted to get that sales at the end because in some cases, he said, "Well, we'll provide them with getting a bonus at the end or involve them in that sort of thing." So when anybody becomes part of the vision and part of the ownership of the business, then it's a lot easy for them to get involved in getting that business to the level. So it's communication, it's getting people involved, it's exciting them to see where you want to go. I mean, it's as own as in that we often sit back and we think, "Oh, this is my baby. This is my business. I want to turn over so much of the year. I want to be able to have that money to be able to put something back into the community." But if you get to tell people that work for you, that's what your vision is. I'm so glad that I'm just budding in because I'm so excited. I'm so glad that you said that because I've just finished writing in the boutique academy, which is my first ever business course for retailers. And that is one of the things that I talk about. You can't just hire people and expect them to do a fantastic job if they have no skin in the game. And even if that skin in the game is knowing what the business wants out of life or what it wants to achieve or how it wants to treat its customers, you can't expect them to work to that same level of passion that you do when they don't know what's going on inside your head. No, that's fine. I mean, that's the basic level is at least sharing what your vision is. The next step is maybe finding a way to get them to take ownership of that. And then the third way is when it becomes, when they live and breathe it as well, it becomes part of it. Now, there's a variety of ways. I mean, communication underpins all of that. But I do know someone who actually gives a small percentage of the share of the business to their customers, I mean to their staff, so that that becomes part of their business. I mean, that's one way. It's not one way that would work for everybody. When I say a share, it's like maybe 1%. So it's not a huge bit. But as soon as they become a 1% shareholder in the business, wow, there's a big change in what's going on. Yep, I can imagine. Even that tiny 1%, you know, if 1% of 100,000 this year, but what happens when that business turns into a multimillion dollar business, it's all of a sudden you want that business to do so much better. I mean, that won't work for everybody, but that's just an example. In the main, it's just, you know, if you share your vision and say, well, look, every year we want to get to this because we're going to donate so much to a charity and it could be, you know, each year, an employee chooses a charity that we donate to. Those are the sort of things that you can do. And then it's communicating that passion and communicating that involvement that makes the difference sometimes between staff just turning up and working and staff turning up and turning that business into wow. So once you've, so we've got here, we've got to have a vision, they've got to have ownership, we've got to communicate that vision, we've got to get them involved. How do you let them know? Do you just get them in a room and tell them? Or do you let them know before you hire them? What's your take on getting them actively involved in taking ownership? Well, part of the hiring process is not just designing and defining the skills that the person has, which can contribute to your organisation or to your business. It's actually also finding if they're going to fit into the culture of the business. So some of the questions that get asked and I do actually help people with interview skills and that sort of process. So one of the questions that often gets asked is about how are they going to fit into that? So you're starting your process at that hiring level. Once you've done that and you'll be explaining to them an outline of what the business is and what you want to do. So you'll be clear up at that point. And then it's the process of once you've hired them of what sometimes termed as induction, that sort of thing. And that's really, I don't know how many people don't even induct their staff. They hire someone and then say, right, you start on Monday at 9am, go out there and work on the floor or stand behind the counter or sell the meat and don't even do a proper induction. And so in the induction part is where you start to really embed by communicating that vision and mission and getting people involved. And then it's a matter of making sure that everybody knows what's going on. I'm not saying it to meetings all the time, but it's coming out from behind the door and saying, hello, getting to know your staff, knowing that they know you, and putting in some of that, well, I don't know, I suppose I could say family. I like places that encourage that family orientation because that's what encourages that being part of everything. And that's communication and speaking. I'm so excited because I've got a whole module based on pretty much exactly what you just said, including inductions. And it's so easy as a small business owner, if it's just you and one casual person to just overlook the fact that you need an induction, it took me years to work that out, that you need an induction process. And life is just so much calmer for people when they've got some boxes that they can check that they feel like they've achieved something at the end of the day. But my question, my next question is, so what happens when you are just a small, so you've got a small retail store and you've got a couple of, maybe you've got two casual stuff, but those people never see each other. And there's a chance that you may only see them from time to time. How do you facilitate really good communication between yourself as the business owner and those staff, but then also between those staff themselves? Okay, well, one of the things that I think is important is to establish some form of communication. So let's be really outside of the box here, even a Facebook group, just for your staff in your business to log on and share some information between each other. There's things like Dropbox, so you can have information going up and down, a little newsletter. But even more would be, I would be organising a get together between you and your staff outside or business hours, even or just at the end of some shift, at least, you know, even if it's just a couple of, every couple of months or something, so that you actually do meet face to face and you know who each other is. So it's encouraging the lines of communication. Using the technology we have today, encouraging people to, even just living a short note at the end of the day, this is what I've done or when you're handing over the shift, there's a variety of things that we can do that will encourage that connection. Because unless you develop a connection and an ownership between everybody, it's very discordant and that's when you start to get, "Oh, well, I won't do that. She can do that." Or, "Well, it wasn't my fault that didn't get done because I thought she was going to be doing it." So then you start to get the easy, "Well, you know, it's not my fault. Someone else should have done it. I didn't know you wanted me to do it." That sort of thing. And that's when businesses start, you know, when you get that, people that stuff are so worried about arguing between each other that they're not giving the information and the attention to the customers. And that's your role as a business owner. I think too many times, if you're in small business, you're so caught up in getting stuff done that not necessarily neglect to communicate with your team, but you neglect to foster that communication between team members. And that could even be somebody that you outsource. Maybe you've got a marketing person or a graphic designer. And because they work in the store and they're not necessarily part of those higher level decision making problems, they don't necessarily communicate with these people. But like you were saying in the beginning, you need to have them involved and give them some ownership and show them, if we're talking about graphic designers, show them some of those images and say, "You know, what do you think? Do you think this represents our customer? Do you think this would appeal to our customer?" Because if you're making all the decisions without them, you can't give them that ownership, can you? You're taking it away from them. Oh, you know, you should be trying to involve them. Now, it's about now. A lot of people say, "Oh, but you know, I can't keep going to them. I'm the owner. I've got to make some decisions." And yes, I'm not saying you don't need to make some basic decisions, but where you can give some extra time to get some feedback from your staff. Because let's face it, unless you're a hands-on owner and lovers maybe. But if you're not in the business or in the shop or wherever you are, daily, the people that know about what's going on, the people that are out there selling directly to the customer. And how often do we find that businesses put in place some sort of process that if you just took a couple of seconds to talk to your sales staff, you would realize that that process isn't going to work. Yeah. I just had an immediate vision of how big business spends so much money on market research. They do. And as a small business owner, you may be able to do a small focus group on your customers and stuff. But at the end of the day, the person who's behind the counter selling the product knows better in those sorts of circumstances than you do. They really do. And it doesn't take more than a few seconds to come in, or maybe a few seconds, maybe 10, 15 minutes. There's a pop in and say, "Look, we need to redesign the shop, or we need to do some revamp. We've got to get some more off from what we're doing." So what's working? What's not working? Now, that's a really simple statement to start with, a very simple communication. But I'm amazed at how many people will suddenly institute changes without actually asking those questions. So the people who know what's working, what's not working. My favourite one that I used to ask my employees, and we had a little sheet that we used to write on at the end of the day where we tracked all of our sales and things. But one of the columns we had was, "Today, I was asked for." Yeah. So, you know, as when I had my stores, I was like, you know, people would come and say, "Oh, we need to get this, and we need to get that." I'm like, "Right. So how many people have asked for it?" Oh, we don't know. So they suggested we implement this system on the sheet where today I was asked for. So at the end of the month, they could come and say, "We need hooded bath towels." And I'd go, "Right. So how many people ask for those?" Well, if six people in one month ask for them, then we need them. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. And that's so indication. And it is. And it's that ownership as well, isn't it? It's them taking on board that they're looking at the products or the services that people want. It's it's involving your staff in the vision of where you want the business to go. And when people are involved in that, then it's amazing how much easier life is and how much your customers and your business absolutely increases. So just in terms of communicating with staff, give me the top, say, three things that somebody could could implement today to improve their communication with their staff. Get your staff in. Talk to them. Get them involved in your vision and your mission. At least face to face. At least I would say at least every quarter so that they do feel involved in Institute, a feedback system of what's going on, what's not working. Make sure that there is maybe some written communication so that when there are changes, everybody's involved with those changes. Don't change without going through some change some change communication to involve people in that. And look at customer service. Make sure that everybody's on the same line with customer service. It's sort of you have to be is a small business owner, sometimes a leader manager. A leader looks for all the the rocks that are out there and the direction that's going in it. And a manager looks at how to post develop the processes that get you there. So when you're looking at that as a business owner, as a leader manager, that means you need to make sure that your staff know and are being involved with that. Which has just made a question pop up in my head. Can you be a good leader or good communicator if you're not a people person? That's a very interesting question Selena and some people will tell you absolutely not. But I'm telling you you can be. Being a people person will maybe help you in some respects be a good leader. Although I'm going to put a caveat in that and say I have seen some people persons who are not good leaders because they've become so involved in the connection with the people that they've forgotten about stepping back and looking at the broad picture. So it can actually be a detriment in some cases. What a leader needs to be able to do is to be able to see the big picture, to be able to see the rocks that are going in it. And most importantly they need to be able to communicate their vision and the mission on how to get where they want to go. So I put down that a leader's got to have good communication skills, good strategic skills and be able to see the big picture. Now you can do that without being a people person. You can communicate your mission. You can communicate your vision without having what I would call a really great people person. I mean I've seen some great leaders who are gruff, growly, logical, wouldn't know how to say hello if you're bubbed into them. No bedside manner. No bedside manner at all. I mean actually if you look at a good example as surgeons in the medical field, absolutely brilliant at what they do and can't really talk to you very well. However they can still be good leaders because as long as they know how to communicate, as long as they know that they need to involve their team and be able to clearly get that vision and mission across then it doesn't matter if they're not a great oh my god you know let's have coffee every day person. It doesn't actually need that. I mean it helps, it makes the atmosphere a little bit more but you can still do it as long as there's communication and it's two-way communication and you connect with your teams that way. And that's also about you just said two-way communication and that made me think that's also about you being open to constructive feedback or constructive criticism from your team members even if it hurts a little bit. You may think that you've got the best wiz bang widget and then you show it to them and they say but this is not what our customer would want. I don't think it's going to work. So it's being open to that two-way communication. It's not just being about a good communicator on the outside, it's also about taking it back in again. It's what we call a what I call positive feedback and it's 360 degree feedback. There's a way to give feedback to your staff and there's a way that you can encourage your staff to give feedback to you. If you can foster an environment where there is a good two-way communication you're always going to have your finger on the pulse of what's changing in your business because that's encouraging people to let you know what's changing and if you're a you know that and you're ahead of that you can steer around those rocks and where you want to go in your vision. If we go back to looking at at a vision and the rocks that come in place that can you know sink your boat of your business pretty quickly. So how do we translate that to what we communicate with our customers? Now is communicating with your staff different to the way you communicate with your customers? I would say personally from my point of view at the at the at the rock bottom no it's not. You still need the same skills that you use when you're speaking to your staff. You need to encourage those same skills when they're speaking to their customer. It's just that the goal and the outcome that you want is a little bit different. When you're speaking to your staff you're wanting to get them involved in and buying into the business and taking on board what you want in your vision. So part of that is encouraging them to speak to the customer. So when they're speaking to the customer they want to get the customer involved in they're helping them to sell what they need to get over what their pain is when they come in, what their desire is, what their bliss is, whatever it is that they're coming in for your staff need to be able to connect to that customer identify that and achieve that goal for them. So at base they're using the same speaking skills. It's just that the goal and outcome from the customer is to have good relations with the customer. Say that's the same as when you talk to your staff you want good relations with your staff. You want the customer to buy in and buy your product or buy your service. Like you were saying before you want them to buy into your vision and your mission yeah that's what you're selling them. Yes that's right. So when you're talking to your staff you're selling them in the big picture the vision and mission of the business but when you're talking to your clients you're selling it in the micro the vision and mission of well we've got what you need to solve your problem or your pain. Interesting isn't it that those same things move from the customer through to the staff. So if you haven't got if you haven't got a vision and a mission for your retail business yet Trish there's go out and do it right now and so do I. Yes because once you've got that it's it flows through. So if you're buying in as a staff member and you're the boss has got you involved and you're in there and the communication is flowing when when you talk to the customer guess what that passion is going to come through that you are so involved and love what you're doing and think that what this business is is got just what that customer needs and that will come through when you speak to them when you have your non-verbals when the customer looks in and sees you they can see that you're buying into it you're eager you're passionate about the business and if you're passionate and eager about what you've got to sell that's going to help your customer make a relationship build the relationship with the customer you've got a few seconds in some cases depending what the business is but it makes a big difference if it they feel if the customer feels comfortable the customer feels like they can relate if the customer feels like you're interested in helping them and the customer might just try to sell at them that's right and the customer might be interested in saying oh I might want to buy and stay here and I might want to come back and I might want to tell my friends about how fantastic these lovely people were so you're building relationships you're getting the customer to buy into the vision of the business it's a similar sort of thing but in a micro but the same speaking type communication skills that you're using that way are the same things that will flow through to get really good customer service okay so we had a couple of top tips to communicate with our staff what's the one top tip that we can use further ourselves or our our staff to communicate with our customers what's the first thing that we should be going at and getting done today be interested in the customer and that means know what you're selling know your product be passionate about it take ownership of what the service or the product is that you're selling because unless you're going to be passionate and take ownership about it and you're knowledgeable about it then why should the customer buy from you if not from somewhere else so you want to have an environment where you've got knowledge an environment where you've got interest the environment where you've got passionate an environment where the staff is interested in solving the customer's problem doesn't that sound like a lovely place to work yeah it's I that's really ideal it doesn't happen all over the place but there are places where I've walked in and that's the environment that I've seen and those places are doing well and isn't that isn't that the place we should be striving to be yeah I mean you may not achieve it and everything but if that's your goal and your vision and you put up on when you're talking to your staff that we want our customers to come into an environment which encourages them to want to be part of who we are to use our service get our products an environment where they know if they ask a question we can answer it or find the answer for it that each and every one of us is is committed to solving their problem then if that's what you're aiming for it doesn't matter if you don't actually attain that you can only even if you don't quite attain it and you fall a bit short you're still going to be ahead of those places that don't even put that up oh you're the woman who's saying words that go straight to my heart well thank you so much for all those hints and tips where can we find more about you Trish okay my website is trishel t-r-i-s-c-h-e-l dot com dot au or if you want to talk to me personally in a strategy session it's Trish Springsteen that's t-r-i-s-h-s-p-r-i-n-g-s-t-w-e-n dot com there's two websites fabulous we'll send me an email we'll link up to those in these show notes thank you so much again and as i said before if you haven't already got a vision and a mission for your business then Trish says that you need one and i say that you need one and if you need help for that you can look at the boutique academy which is launching soon or you can contact Trish and do a strategy session with her thanks so much again Trish absolute my delight thank you so much the opportunity to share my magic with you and your audience selena you have a great day you too i hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the bringing business to retail podcast you can find all of the show notes over at selena night dot com if you found something that you heard today particularly useful i'd love it if you could leave me a review on itunes or stitcher and of course feel free to share this episode with someone that you think could benefit by listening to it want more retail business strategies you can watch the bringing business to retail tv show where each week i'll answer a question or provide you with a simple actionable retail business strategy that you can implement in your business right away if you have a question or a gift i'd love to hear from you drop my team an email at podcast at selena night dot com and i'll see you on the next episode have a great week you [BLANK_AUDIO]
